武汉体育馆

Wuhan Gymnasium stands at No. 612 Jiefang Avenue at the Chongren Road junction in Qiaokou district, Wuhan, on the city's main east-west artery in Hankou. Completed in 1956 at a cost of 1.6 million yuan, it was among the first large indoor sports halls built in Hubei after 1949 and the earliest in Wuhan. The building follows Soviet-era architectural conventions; its competition hall seats 3,800 spectators and covers 14,250 sqm of floor space within roughly 14,500 sqm of building area. Inside are the competition hall, gymnastics and weightlifting rooms, a billiards room, a dance studio, practice halls for several ball games and athletes' rooms; outside are football, basketball and tennis courts, plus an indoor swimming pool and a gymnastics hall in the compound. In April 1958 Mao Zedong met delegates to the national science conference here, and in October 1985 Hu Yaobang and Nicolae Ceausescu received Hubei and Wuhan officials in the hall. Fourteen Wuhan-born Olympic and world champions have come through its programmes, making it a starting point for the city's competitive sport. In 2019 the gymnasium was renovated as the taekwondo venue for the seventh CISM World Military Games, and it has also hosted the 2015 national youth fencing camp, the 2016 China boxing championship and the 2017-2018 China Table Tennis Super League. It was listed as a Wuhan outstanding historic building in 2018 and as a municipal cultural relic in December 2023. Metro Line 1 stops at Chongren Road, and buses on Jiefang Avenue serve the Tongji Hospital stop. The 14,250 sqm hall is large enough for basketball, volleyball, badminton and gymnastics, and it remains a public fitness and school-sport base for Qiaokou.